Orientalism, Star Power and Cinethetic Racism

in Seventies Italian Exploitation Cinema

BY CALUM WADDELL | University of Lincoln

ABSTRACT

Focusing on such films as The Man from Deep River (Umberto Lenzi, 1972), Last Cannibal World (Ruggero Deodato, 1977)
and Black Emanuelle (Bitto Albertini, 1975), this article suggests that the presentation of Asian “Otherness” in these films,
in particular the “exotic girlfriend,” is also developed to assist with the redemption of key white characters and our final
appreciation of their grace under pressure. Nevertheless, with leading female stars, particularly the Burmese-born Me Me
Lai and Indonesian Laura Gemser, these Italian exploitation cycles presented 1970s audiences with an influential vision
of Asian star power. Whilst the roles may have been in the wider context of racist narratives and wrestled with a postco-
lonial panic about multiculturism, Lai and Gemser remain largely unacknowledged for proving that commercial cinema
could be grounded on the promise of a newfound, and sometimes confident, Asian sexuality.

“There are Westerners, and there are Orientals. The former
dominate; the latter must be dominated, which usually
means having their land occupied, their internal affairs rigidly
controlled, their blood and treasure put at the disposal of one
or another Western power” (Said 44).
“Thailand – a country where two thirds of the jungle is still
unexplored. Here, death reigns. They didn’t know what kind
of animal he was. They had never seen a white man before. And
he had never seen such brutality. Barbaric violence was the law
they lived by” (Voiceover from the international trailer of The
Man from Deep River, Medusa Films, 1972).
“It seems impossible that today there are still primitive tribes
who have never seen a white man. Tribes still living in the stone
age. It is very dangerous here. In fact, we have to be continually
protected by armed men” (Voiceover from the international
trailer of Last Cannibal World, err Cinematografica, 1977).
D
espite some recent academic writing on the race
representation in blaxploitation cinema of the
seventies1, very little has been published in regard
to how popular and comparable exploitation cycles have
presented Asianness, particularly in the two decades that
followed the removal of the Western colonial powers from
the continent.2 Ivo Ritzer, for instance, acknowledges that
the Italian spaghetti western, Akira Kurosawa samurai film
and what he dubs the “Chinese wuxia” cinema from Hong
Kong shared both aesthetic and thematic tropes, as well as
an interesting cross-cultural ethnoscape that included actors
such as Lee Van Cleef and Lieh Lo (174). However, the
author’s enticing argument--which I draw upon further in
this article--that Asian ethnicity becomes interchangeable
(with Far Eastern actors playing characters from different
countries – whether China or Japan) is downplayed slightly
in favour of a wider discussion of how the kung-fu film
might be seen as breaking down global cinematic barriers,

1
See Yvonne Sims's Women of Blaxploitation: How the Black Action Film Heroine Changed American Popular Culture and Stephanie Dunn's Baad Bitches and
Sassy Supermamas: Black Power Action Films.
2
There are three more recent exceptions that kept the European powers in the East past the 1940s and 1950s: Britain governed Brunei until 1984 and Hong
Kong until 1997, while Portugal remained responsible for Macau until 1999.

MISE- EN - SCÈNE 01
 Orientalism, Star Power and Cinethetic Racism in Seventies Italian Exploitation Cinema

with its tropes reimagined within some spaghetti westerns.
Whilst this conclusion is difficult to disagree with, the East-
West discussion regarding the so-called “Chinese wuxia” is
further complicated, by Hong Kong’s placement during the
genre’s golden age as a British colony and Western outpost.
The internationalism of Bruce Lee or the Shaw Brothers
could be argued, much as with the Italian spaghetti west-
ern, to have more to do with a sense of exotic familiarity
for the audiences abroad (heroes and villains, comedic set
pieces, widescreen Hollywood-style photography, Mandarin
language to maximise appeal to Chinese expat commu-
nities) as opposed to any imagined ethnic unfamiliarity.
Witness, in comparison, how Hong Kong cinema flourished,
including with English-language speakers; meanwhile, the
less thematically-accessible Mainland Chinese film strug-
gled (and struggles) to find an audience outside of Beijing,
including with a scattered expat diaspora.
It is the intention of this article, however, to argue
that the Italian exploitation cinema of this era, although
often Orientalist insofar as showcasing a clear nostalgia for
European domination and occupation of “savage” lands,
is nonetheless important for introducing and grounding
commercially successful cinematic presentations of Far
Eastern sex appeal. As opposed to Ritzer, I do not intend to
argue that the films themselves are internationalist insofar
as integrating genres, or even in purposing a clear finan-
cial interest in other global commercial cinemas.3 Rather,
I maintain that at least two examples of female perform-
ers were given a rare chance to progress Asian sexuality (as
a commercial vice) during the 1970s. Furthermore, such
sexualisation still remains largely absent in Hollywood
cinema, suggesting that mainstream America, even in
an era of breakthrough popularity from attractive South
Korean pop bands such as BTS and Blackpink, does not
believe a wide audience exists for a similarly glamorous
screen Asianness.4 Even so, and as I will discuss, confu-
sion about Asianness and Asian identity continues even
in the Academy, making these films in need of some
degree of retrospection.
In addition, despite the frequent, recurring, and sexist
image of the “exotic girlfriend” in the 70s texts discussed in
this paper, it can be argued that the Italian exploitation films
of the 1970s initiate a problematic cinematic engagement
with Southeast Asia and Southeast Asianness that can still be
found in major American studio releases such as Brokedown
Palace (20th Century Fox, 1999) and The Hangover Part II
(Legendary Pictures, 2011). I will also discuss how and why
this representation compliments images of carnally available,
and exotic, female brides or sex partners with direct refer-
ence to the Emmanuelle (Trinarca Films, 1974) franchise and
its many spin-off films. In doing so, I will maintain how this
period led to a breakout career for Britain’s first and gener-
ally unrecognised Asian sex symbol, the actress Me Me Lai
(Fig. 1). Indeed, Lai, as well as her most comparable contem-
porary Laura Gemser, deserves far more recognition for
at least maintaining a leading lady presence in a period
where white women, such as Silvia Kristel, were believed
to be a more sexually desirable box office alternative than
a performer of Oriental ethnicity, even when a role such as
Emmanuelle called for the latter. For this reason, Lai and
Gemser--who headlined popular commercial exploitation
cycles--deserve far more attention, and arguably even respect,
than has been previously awarded to them.
At least one recent addition to addressing the time
period of this article is the monograph The Hollywood Meme
(2016), which contains a welcome look at the past cine-
matic trashiness of the Philippines under the Marcos regime.
Author Iain Robert Smith acknowledges the Filipino appro-
priation of such Hollywood tropes as the spy-fi adventures
of James Bond into low budget, satirical texts that adapt
foreign ideas into an indigenous setting. Smith also argues
that this appropriation of ideas from a dominant cultural
form (Hollywood) into a third world locale (the Philippines,
itself a former American colony) might be seen as a site
of resistance: “One could quite imagine a study of trans-
national adaptations of Hollywood in terms of a subver-
sive resistance to US hegemony, the Empire Writing Back
through appropriating the very cultural artefacts which

3
The Italian cannibal films, for instance, feature real animal slaughter – making them a likely turn-off for even the hardiest of horror movie fans in the 1970s
and incomparable, in terms of their content, to other narrative-driven fiction motion pictures of the time. In addition, the Laura Gemser film Emanuelle in
America (New Film Productions S.R.L., 1977) features a pornographic sequence involving a female cast member and a horse, again unlikely to indicate an eye
for widespread box office success.
4
Certainly, whilst Ritzer is correct to acknowledge the crossover appeal of kung-fu action stars such as Lieh Lo, any potential sex appeal was clearly never
considered by western producers.

02 Vol.05, No.01 | Spring 2020


Fig. 1 | Me Me Lai in The Man from Deep River, 01:09:00. 88 Films,1973.
embody this hegemonic force” (27). It is difficult to main-
tain a similar line of defence for the Italian cannibal cycle,
a brief run of extremely gruesome horror cinema that flour-
ished during the 1970s after the success of The Man from
Deep River in 1972, and continued into the early-to-mid
1980s. However, this conclusion is not because, as some
have argued, the Italian cannibal film is a “rare instance
of an Italian exploitation cycle not so obviously indebted
to a Hollywood box office success before it” (Kerekes and
Slater 49). Instead, as this paper will discuss, the cycle exists
in a larger transnational discussion of postcolonial Asian
representations, using a white, civilised European protag-
onist to position the former as synonymous with exoti-
cism, savagery, and sexual availability. Nonetheless, having
acknowledged this, it should be ascertained that Lai’s
Asianness – a clear selling point for the films that she starred
in – can be seen, at least insofar as she is the leading actress
(albeit to be lusted after by co-star and audience alike), to
resist the Euro-normalcy of similar, sexually provocative
cinema of this time.
At least initially, the Italian cannibal films were set in
Southeast Asia. The thematic of the texts take the fish-out-
of-water scenario from concurrent Hollywood westerns
Calum Waddell
The race-conflict, which in the
American westerns of this period
were situated around Native
Americans and their resistance
to European settlers, is adapted
to exploit a sense of postcolonial
unease about exotic lands.
such as A Man Called Horse (National General Pictures,
1970) and Little Big Man (National General Pictures, 1970),
and introduces them to a horror narrative. The race-con-
flict, which in the American westerns of this period were
situated around Native Americans and their resistance
to European settlers, is adapted to exploit a sense of post-
colonial unease about exotic lands. White explorers collide
with violent but tightknit tribes who have never been
colonised and thus remain “primitive” and “dangerous”
(returning us to my opening quote from Said about how
Westerners “dominate” and Asians are “the dominated”).
Dialogue in these films is also unmistakably reactionary.
MISE- EN - SCÈNE 03
 Orientalism, Star Power and Cinethetic Racism in Seventies Italian Exploitation Cinema
Underneath these offensive
portrayals, however, we might
also see a modern European voice
entertaining an early identity
crisis in the wake of post-war
immigration from the former
Eastern colonies.
In Last Cannibal World, for instance, the natives are
referred to as “goddamn little monkeys” and “insufficient
idiots” by the narrative’s two white, European heroes.
Attesting to the perceived need for European interven-
tions and rule, we are told of their speech that “these are
not words, these tribes don’t know language as we know it.”
From this perspective, it is tempting to conclude that
a film such as Last Cannibal World is little more than
vulgar fascist and racist populism, but there is perhaps
something more contemporary in the narrative, namely
a backlash against Empire scrutiny and a rising tide of
globalisation. This link can be seen a decade earlier in the
popular Italian mondo-documentary cycle, with Africa
Addio (Rizzoli Films, 1966) initiating a clear solidarity with
British and French colonial endeavours. Making its lean-
ings explicit, Africa Addio even ends with onscreen text
that assures sceptical viewers: “This film, born without
prejudices, does not attempt and has never attempted
to create new ones. It has only tried to document the
reality of how blood spilled anywhere represents a loss
of wealth for the entire world.” Prior to this, however, the
exposition makes no secret of what side of the colonial
debate it favours. The African continent itself is described
as a “big black baby,” and Europe is hailed as having “given
far more than it has taken.”
Recent writing on Italian cinema from Derek
Duncan, albeit not addressing the country’s exploitation
films, also discusses this factor and is worth acknowledg-
ing. The author admits, for instance, that after World War
II, and following the collapse of European rule in African,
Asian, Caribbean, and Middle Eastern countries led initially
Umberto Lenzi, the director of The Man from Deep River, would drive this issue home in his later Cannibal Ferox (Dania Films, 1981), when a savage Latin
5
American tribe comes across a victim’s wallet and casually throws away his American Express card – i.e. globalisation counts for nothing without prior colonisation.
04 Vol.05, No.01 | Spring 2020
to an influx of labourers into the former Empire nations.
Italy, which had been a comparatively minor colonial power,
was nonetheless not able to resist migration either: “The
question of what it means to be Italian has been thrown
wide open” (195). Duncan, drawing on some other authors
in the field, looks at the representation of Albanians in
popular Italian cinema, a discussion that seeks to position
how race becomes integrated into the cinematic landscape
as neither “Other” nor quite indigenous. Interestingly, such
a hypothesis can also be lent to Africa Addio and even Last
Cannibal Word: in the former, the directors express sorrow
for European retreat from a foreign continent and cele-
brate the integration of workers in apartheid-era South
Africa (arguing that “they” will evolve into “us”). In the
latter, a similar, equally obnoxious, proposition is presented
wherein suspense is drawn from the idea that Lai’s beautiful
but foreign tribeswoman can make it back to sanctuary in
Europe with her white saviour, thus integrating herself into
the “civilised.” Duncan thus raises an important question
that I will continue to discuss: what device do these “foreign”
ethnicities serve in both the narrative of Italian exploitation
cinema as well as in what they are attempting “sell”?
Marwan M. Kraidy also acknowledges that studies
on cultural globalisation have fallen into two schools of
thought: “as the transfiguration of worldwide diversity into
a pandemic Westernised consumer culture” or “as a process
of hybridisation in which cultural mixture and adaptation
continuously transform and renew cultural forms” (16).
The author challenges both, despite their prominence in
the Academy. Reactionary films such as The Man from Deep
River and Last Cannibal World, made by directors born
before or shortly after the Second World War, may be seen to
argue that Westernised consumer culture is not inevitable –
even in an era of globalisation5. Last Cannibal World instead
offers audiences a story of sophisticated Europeans and their
various technical achievements, which are too far advanced
for primitive Asians to even engage with, let alone under-
stand. When a trapped explorer, played by Massimo Foschi,
attempts to reason with the primitive tribe that captures
him in Last Cannibal World, he is urinated on by the clan’s
infants and threatened with violence by the elders. The tribe
believes that, having seen his airplane land near their cave,

Fig. 2 | Me Me Lai and Massimo Foschi in Last Cannibal World, 00:53:41. Code Red, 1977.
he is actually some kind of bird-man, and their inability to
comprehend modern technology leads them to frustration
when their European captive proves unable to fly. As crude
as these examples are, they are emblematic of the cycle’s
problematic and racist attitude towards Asia – a land where,
without colonialism, the locals might have retained their
savage manners forever. Underneath these offensive portray-
als, however, we might also see (again, to build on Duncan’s
argument) a modern European voice entertaining an early
identity crisis in the wake of post-war immigration from the
former Eastern colonies. As such, it is not too far-fetched
to believe that a film such as Last Cannibal World was made
for an audience that needed a racist fantasy to feed its own
cynicism towards the early stages of multiculturalism
in Europe (Fig. 2).
This factor is part of the reason why the initial
run of Italian cannibal films is worth acknowledging
(as I will explain, the demarcation can be separated into
those which depict Asianness and those which demonise
Latin America, concurrent perhaps with shifting geograph-
ical concerns as the 1970s bleed into the 1980s). However,
these films can also be seen to have introduced, grounded,
and inspired a run of Asian leading ladies within the
Calum Waddell
Italian film industry, including lesser-known names such
as Chai Lee, the Chinese-Italian star of Yellow Emanuelle
(Cineart Films, 1976) and, by extension, offered a compet-
ing Oriental sex appeal to viewers of exploitation cinema.
Of course, through such hypersexual figures as Lee, they
also provoke Orientalist assumptions – particularly
regarding the exotic girlfriend (the sex partners for Lee
in Yellow Emanuelle are also conspicuously white).
Curiously, this exotic girlfriend presentation is not too
far removed from a more recently commented upon
phenomenon within the film studies lexicon: the so-called
“magic negro” character.
In his famous article "Cinethetic Racism: White
Redemption and Black Stereotypes in 'Magical Negro'
Films," Matthew Hughey describes the image of a recurring
Hollywood film stereotype: the African-American character
who exists to guide a white, usually male, protagonist to
a romantically, spiritually, or financially fulfilling destiny.
Describing this “cinethetic racism,” Hughey refers to
a stock character that often appears as a lower
class, uneducated black person who possesses
supernatural or magical powers. These powers are
MISE- EN - SCÈNE 05
 Orientalism, Star Power and Cinethetic Racism in Seventies Italian Exploitation Cinema

Fig. 3 | Me Me Lai in Eaten Alive!, 01:17:13. Severin Films, 1980.

used to save and transform disheveled, uncultured, rule, would note the “lovely slim young Chinese girls and
lost, or broken whites (almost exclusively white their neat and graceful half-foreign dresses” (637). Only
men) into competent, successful, and content through dominating this enticing and mysterious sexuality
people within the context of the American myth can the brave, trepid European manage to complete his or
of redemption and salvation. (544). her own adventure within the Italian cannibal narrative and
find spiritual satisfaction.
However, it is also possible to argue that a similar cine-
To further highlight this argument and how what we
thetic racism can be found in the tropes of the Italian canni-
might see as Asian “cinethetic racism” functions in this cycle,
bal cycle of the 1970s and their representation of Asianness.
I will use the example of actress Me Me Lai in her roles in
Although these films stop short of offering an Americanised
The Man from Deep River and Last Cannibal World. In intro-
view of the world, at least insofar as suggesting (per the
ducing this argument, it is important to maintain that The
“magical negro”) that white privilege and success is concur-
Man from Deep River, a largely unknown exploitation film
rent with societal stability, they do attempt to juxtapose the
outside of fans of “video nasties” or the Italian cannibal
uncolonized savage with the submissive coloniser. Similar,
filone in general, is far more influential – at least insofar as
then, to “cinethetic racism” in African-American representa-
grounding representations of Asian sexuality in the cinema
tions, these films also provide a submissive, typically female
of the 1970s – than has previously been recognised. Both
character, who assists with guiding the European charac-
The Man from Deep River and Last Cannibal World are set
ter(s) to safety and risks her life to do so. The narrative of
in Southeast Asia, and Lai plays a glamorous tribal woman
the early Italian cannibal film is thus unmistakably cynical
in each, unable to understand or speak English but increas-
about Asian identity and government, but they also repeat
ingly more obsessed with a captured white European male
an early facet of colonial societies in the Far East, which is
who later has the opportunity to sexually dominate her. In
that Oriental sexuality is desirable and easily available. For
The Man from Deep River, Lai dies shortly after childbirth,
instance, author Piers Brendon mentions how a visiting
whereas in Last Cannibal World, she escapes from her tribe
writer to the island of Hong Kong, during early colonial

06 Vol.05, No.01 | Spring 2020


Fig. 4 | Laura Gemser in Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals, 00:30:48. 88 Films, 1977.
with an English explorer who proceeds to knock her uncon-
scious and rape her. In the following scene, removed from
the film’s UK DVD release, Lai serves her attacker fresh fruit
and shows her loyalty, both sexual and spiritual, to him. She
is later captured and eaten by her own people as revenge for
her decision to copulate with a foreigner. The European later
wins a tribal conflict, but his ultimate “success” and subse-
quent humiliation to the primitives is that he has bedded
their most sought-after woman.
The most famous production of the Italian canni-
bal cycle is undoubtedly Cannibal Holocaust (F.D.
Cinematografica, 1980), a film that, despite its initial criti-
cal dismissal,6 has undergone some contemporary reapprais-
al.7 It is curious that when the cycle reaches a new decade
with its most famous instalments, Cannibal Holocaust and
Cannibal Ferox (Dania Films, 1981), Amazonia and the
small port city of Leticia in Colombia replaces Southeast
Asia as the narrative location. The reason for this decision
might be found in Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals (New
Film Productions S.R.L., 1977), which takes Indonesian
6
Landis, for instance, belittles the film as being “grotesque and beyond vile” (211).
7
See Mikita Brottman's Offensive Films.
Calum Waddell
actress Laura Gemser and her “Black Emanuelle” character
to Brazil, despite the fact the filmmakers are clearly shoot-
ing in an Italian national park (complete with non-indige-
nous animals such as African chimpanzees and a Burmese
python). Nonetheless, the juxtaposition of Gemser’s cosmo-
politan Indonesian allure (she is introduced as a sophisti-
cated, well-travelled journalist working in New York) with
“primitive” Latin Americans may have sabotaged further
attempts to repeat the beautiful, but savage, Oriental of Lai.
As such, when Lai reappears in the cycle with Eaten Alive
(Dania Films, 1980), she is cast against her previous exotic
Lai’s cannibal films can thus
be seen to engage in a wider
dialogue with other Italian
exploitation cycles, in particular
the Black Emanuelle franchise.
MISE- EN - SCÈNE 07
 Orientalism, Star Power and Cinethetic Racism in Seventies Italian Exploitation Cinema
Fig. 5 | Laura Gemser in Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals, 01:10:45. 88 Films, 1977.
girlfriend stereotype as an unwilling member of a Jonestown-
style religious cult who seeks to flee her Western captors and
escape to New York. She does not succeed and, per the title’s
promise, is held at knifepoint and indeed “eaten alive” (Fig.
3). Gemser’s Asianness, then, whilst still of sexual availability
as part of her exotic girlfriend role, is adaptable to a modern,
professional, big-city career and setting.
Lai’s cannibal films can be seen to engage in a wider
dialogue with other Italian exploitation cycles, in particu-
lar the Black Emanuelle franchise (San Nicola Produzione
Cinematografica, 1975). In his discussion of Albertini’s
Return of Shanghai Joe (C.B.A. Produttori e Distributori
Associati, 1975), Ritzer acknowledges that the director
often fails to ground the Asian descent of his characters,
noting that “the ethnic origins of the Asians are no longer
of any interest” (170). This criticism could also be lent
to Black Emanuelle. Before discussing this further, it is
worth pointing out that while Gemser's and Lai's screen
Asianness are not entirely identical, neither would have
evolved without the other. Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals
would not exist without The Man from Deep River, and it
is interesting to contrast how Gemser’s Asianness is juxta-
posed with her exotic backdrop vs. Lai and her timid but
08 Vol.05, No.01 | Spring 2020
seductive tribeswoman. As seen in Fig. 4, Gemser’s glamor-
ous photo-journalist joins a small group of fellow American
explorers in setting out to the Amazonas to find out if the
legend of an ancient cannibal tribe is true in Emanuelle and
the Last Cannibals. She has a profession and a clear narra-
tive purpose. Lai, on the other hand, portrays a mysterious
primitive sexual exoticism that is lusted after by a European
captive who must, in order to sustain his survival, take her
virginity and “dominate” her, as happens in both The Man
from Deep River and Last Cannibal World.
Gemser’s Asianness is also presented as desir-
able (including to her male and female co-stars), and
in Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals, her beauty saves at
least one of her Caucasian colleagues from death. Gemser
pretends to be an exotic “Water God,” arising from the
Amazon river amid some shots from a flare gun (“the Indios
are very superstitious,” she reassures one of her lovers),
and the besotted natives allow her to take her colleague
to safety, enthralled by her Asian beauty. There is still
some cinethetic racism here – with the presentation of
Gemser alluding to the “magical negro” character whose
stock is to provide safety to the perplexed white person-
alities and monetary sexual gratification to the primitive

Amazonians – there can be little doubt that her Black
Emanuelle character has more independence than Lai’s
equally hypersexual tribeswoman. Emanuelle and the Last
Cannibals is the most blatant attempt to rewrite the canni-
bal film narrative, and in particular, its representation of the
“savage” but irresistible, and ultimately subservient, Asian
– sexually conquered and deflowered in her own land and
frustrated among her own (desexualised) people. As bizarre
as it might sound, it is not improbable that the producers
behind the successful Black Emanuelle series were engaged
in an attempt to appropriate Lai’s Asianness, and especially
her exotic girlfriend persona, into a more modern setting
and dominant persona.
Gemser also brings a more predatory sexuality to her
roles than Lai – she sleeps with multiple characters and
usually on terms which she initiates (albeit in narratives
designed to guide her through as many sexually exploit-
ative scenarios as possible). This factor is in stark contrast
to Lai’s rape and domination, which she eventually shows a
fondness for, in Last Cannibal World. Nevertheless, Gemser
is still – as with Lai – represented as the exotic girlfriend.
Besotted white men, and women, are seen vying for her
sexual attention and find themselves unable to return to
“normal” same-race relationships afterwards. If cinethetic
racism involves an ethnic minority altering the purpose
and spiritual wellbeing of the dominant skin colour, then
Gemser’s Black Emanuelle still fulfils this role. In postcolo-
nial Kenya, the setting for Black Emanuelle, Gemser finds
herself among wealthy white landowners who have created
a “safe space” in the country’s vast highlands8. Immediately
desirable, Gemser’s Asianness intrudes and disrupts the
general white-on-white orgies and exclusive expat parties
of Nairobi (which, in the narrative, is interchangeable with
sub-Saharan African identity; despite her clear Oriental
ethnicity, Gemser is asked more than once if she is local to
Kenya). At the conclusion of the original Black Emanuelle,
an unhappily married bourgeois English man (played by
Angelo Infanti) travels miles outside of the Kenyan capital
to try and stop Emanuelle from leaving the country so that
she can consider a life with him. She turns him down and
moves on with her adventures – the first indication that the
series intends to progress in a different direction, at least
8
See Caroline Elkins's Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya.
Calum Waddell
superficially, from Lai’s cannibal filone and their representa-
tion of the “exotic girlfriend” as trophy partner to a wealthy
and “deserving” European male.
I use the term “filone” here in the wake of Mikel
Koven’s study of the Italian giallo, which the author sees as
being part of the wider horror or crime genre. Koven sees in
the giallo a “cluster of concurrent streamlets, veins, or tradi-
tions—filone” (6). Similarly, I would argue that the Italian
cannibal film, which had a not inconsiderable five-year gap
between The Man from Deep River and Last Cannibal World
and Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals, be seen as part of
a wider genre in Italian exploitation-horror which would
become notorious during the British “video nasty” period for
its heightened practical special effects (see Ega) and images
of women under threat (Fig. 5). I have already mentioned
how both The Man from Deep River and Last Cannibal World
exist in dialogue with Laura Gemser’s Black Emanuelle fran-
chise, particularly in changing the “exotic girlfriend” from
submissive and besotted to somewhat dominant and inde-
pendent. However, the link between various Italian horror
films of this period, representing different filone, is also clear
in the occasional use of exotic settings: Zombie Flesh-Eaters
(Variety Films, 1979) uses the Caribbean, Anthropophagous
(Filmirage, 1980) is staged on a deserted Greek island, and
Alien Contamination (Alex Cinematografica, 1980) takes its
action to Colombia. In some cases, these exotic locations
allude to colonial history – Zombie Flesh-Eaters, for instance,
makes direct reference to conquistadors and ancient black
magic rituals, but usually it is to initiate the fear of being a
white “civilised” European in an anarchistic land.
The Italian horror film remained profitable and prolific
during the 1970s. As mentioned by Stefano Baschiera, the
proliferation of second- and third-run cinemas across Italy,
coupled with the import market of the UK, the United
States et al. supported indigenous, low-budget genre
products throughout the decade (45-46). The author also
acknowledges how “1980s Italian horror has been analysed
by scholars [. . .] through its most iconic sub-genres: canni-
bal and zombie films,” but then adds that the former “started
at the end of the 1970s” (48). However, it is The Man from
Deep River that signals the beginning of the filone as well as
its relationship with Asian representations. Most of the cast
MISE- EN - SCÈNE 09
 Orientalism, Star Power and Cinethetic Racism in Seventies Italian Exploitation Cinema
Fig. 6 | Laura Gemser under threat in Emanuelle in America, 00:04:33. Mondo Macabro, 1977.
is Thai, with leading man Ivan Rassimov as the sole white
character with any dialogue in the entire film. Although
Rassimov is Italian, he plays an Englishman in the narrative.
The Italian cannibal films, which Kay Dickinson
acknowledges “concoct lurid fantasies about the non-West-
ern world” (172), typically feature a white explorer, beset
by “primitive,” antagonistic foreign natives. For instance,
The Man from Deep River has Rassimov’s European travel
photographer kidnapped by a tribe near the Thai-Burmese
border and subjected to extensive punishments for his intru-
sion into their waters. The tribe mistakes him for a fish-
man when they see him snorkelling in the water near its
village. What makes the 1970s strain of these films unique
is that the white protagonist usually finds some kind of
spiritual affirmation through a romance with a beautiful
Asian woman or, as in Mountain of the Cannibal God (Dania
Films, 1978), via being worshipped as a sexual deity. In each
case, the message is provocative and clear: white, European
sexuality is “sophisticated and dominant” (the coloniser),
whereas Asian sexuality is “submissive and dominated” (the
colonised). The films, despite their Italian nationality, act
as a surprising nostalgia for European colonial thought,
with only Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals – thanks to the
10 Vol.05, No.01 | Spring 2020
presence of Gemser – attempting to work against the filone’s
narrative worship of whiteness. Nonetheless, if the concept
of Orientalism involves “the Westerner in a whole series of
possible relationships with the Orient without ever losing
him the relative upper hand” (Said 15), then a film such as
The Man from Deep River plays a critical part in understand-
ing how early exploitation filone sustain this perception
of the Far East.
When academic discussion of the Italian canni-
bal film has surfaced, as from Mikita Brottman (1996),
Dickinson (2007), or Danny Shipka (2011), it has
frequently been around the more infamous Cannibal
Holocaust and with minimal, if any, reference to ethnicity
or location. Perhaps this lack of attention is because, for
any interested researcher, the relationship of the Italian
cannibal texts to nationhood, ethnic representation, and
even “Asianness” is confusing. Bernard, for instance,
mentions how the films tend to “blend documentary real-
ism with fictional filmmaking” (Baschiera and Hunter 162),
but does not address how this stylistic attribute is muddied
by an additional, and clear, anti-realism in regard to setting
and race. Part of the racism most emblematic of Lai’s canni-
bal films, and also the Gemser Black Emanuelle films, is

Fig. 7 | Not Quite Thailand: Dutch model Silvia Kristel as Emmanuelle, 00:14:49. Studio Canal, 1974.
that Asian identity is considered transferable and inde-
finable. One does not need to be from anywhere in Asia
because these films make it clear that Asian people are one
and the same. As mentioned, Gemser also becomes trans-
ferable to Africa. Her first appearance in Black Emanuelle,
on an airplane from New York to Nairobi, has a white
passenger engage with her in Swahili, assuming that she
is African. Gemser’s exotic, clearly Indonesian ethnicity
thus becomes interchangeable with a perception of the
“dark continent.” In later Black Emanuelle films, Gemser’s
race goes unacknowledged, suggesting cynicism towards
the audience for these exploitation texts and a presumption
that they would not even know where Indonesia is.
Adding to the confusion, despite claiming to be
set in Mindanao in the Philippines, an island that still
remains under martial law today due to Islamic separat-
ists, Last Cannibal World uses Malaysia, most notably the
iconic Batu Caves near Kuala Lumpur, and Malaysian
actors to play the onscreen tribespeople, with Lai as the sole
exception. The [Orientalist] assumption was presum-
ably that no one would notice the racial difference
between a Malaysian and a Filipino, let alone someone
of Burmese ancestry. This confusion of Oriental identity
Calum Waddell
continues in the cycle with Mountain of the Cannibal
God, which is set in New Guinea but mainly filmed in
Sri Lanka, and with Sri Lankan actors as the tribespeo-
ple, as well as Eaten Alive! (Umberto Lenzi, 1980), which
comes from the same production company (Dania Films)
and uses the same confusion between setting and location.
Not only are the onscreen locations accepted as fact by
Shipka, but also the supposed “third world” setting is treated
with appalling disdain by the author, who seems to believe
that shooting in developing countries is somehow concur-
rent with austerity scenery. Speaking of Mountain of the
Cannibal God, Shipka notes how the “film does boast
some slick production values, belying the fact that a
majority of the film was shot in Sri Lanka and Malaysia”
(119) – as if the filmmakers would have been better off
recapturing the stunning Southeast Asian scenery in a
Hollywood studio. Despite the popularity of Cannibal
Holocaust, which has surely overshadowed previous films,
the filone is thus a generally unrecognised but import-
ant part of popular and commercial Asian representa-
tion of the 1970s – particularly when even now authors
indicate little knowledge of where they were filmed.
Given that tourist-friendly Asian locations such as
MISE- EN - SCÈNE 11
 Orientalism, Star Power and Cinethetic Racism in Seventies Italian Exploitation Cinema

Fig. 8 | Laura Gemser vs. nature in Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals, 00:33:47. 88 Films, 1977.

That the Burmese Lai would irresistible, “exotic” women. Attesting to Lai’s success in
the role of an alluring and sexually available tribal woman,
play both Japanese and Chinese the actress mentions that her second film in the filone, Last
at the start of her acting Cannibal World, was pre-sold on the guarantee that she
would be starring in it:
career anticipates the later,
I believe that our sequel was sold well before
aforementioned Orientalist Last Cannibal World was made. A cinema
assumption that all Far Eastern company, whose name I forget, paid all of my
races are one and the same – and expenses for me to go to Australia to promote
The Last Cannibal World. I was there for about
this would become an even more three weeks and it was first class travel, a nice
explicit factor of Lai’s first hotel and a chauffeur driven car! I appeared on
all the famous talk shows over there and I recall
leading roles. someone telling me that if I was in a film, it was
sold instantly to the Far East. How true this
Malaysia can still encourage such disdainful comments, was, I cannot say, but I was having a great time!
it could even be said that some of these films were (Lai qtd. in Waddell 50)
ahead of their time.
In both films, Lai exists as a character who assists in
Before the blockbuster Emmanuelle took its young,
solving white European problems, especially topical to the
white swinger, played by Silvia Kristel, to Thailand –
postcolonial lands she finds herself inhabiting (it is made
presented as a nation of sexual debauchery – The Man from
clear in The Man from Deep River that the tribe is present
Deep River introduced a similar fish-out-of-water story
in a lawless border between Thailand and Burma). Born in
of someone seduced by the country’s lurid beauty and

12 Vol.05, No.01 | Spring 2020


Burma (today’s Myanmar), raised in London, and currently
residing in Essex where she is a grandmother and retired
policewoman9, actress Me Me Lai could lay claim to being
Britain’s first international Asian sex symbol, although she
is given little recognition for this. Marketing herself with an
exotic-sounding nom-de-plume in the early 1970s and (come
the middle of the decade) large breast implants, the actress
and model would first take to the screen as a typical example
of Oriental window dressing:
I got into acting, and also modelling, through
some girlfriends who did some extra work on
films and television. I also did some walk-on
roles and my first speaking part was at the
BBC – it was for the series Omnibus and in the
episode entitled The Life Story of Modigliani. I
play a French-Chinese girl called Elvira, who is
painted by Modigliani. Peter McEnery played
Modigliani. I have still never seen this particular
Omnibus episode. (Lai qtd. in Waddell 48)
Following this minor beginning, Lai would be cast
as a Japanese character called Chi-San in Crucible of Terror
(Glendale Films, 1971). The actress would also lend her
skills to the role of a hypersexual, easily-seduced young
Chinese expat called Nan Lee in The Au Pair Girls (Kenneth
Shipman Productions, 1972). That the Burmese Lai would
play both Japanese and Chinese at the start of her acting
career anticipates the later, aforementioned Orientalist
assumption that all Far Eastern races are one and the same,
and this would become an even more explicit factor of Lai’s
first leading roles. In both films Lai’s exoticism, rather than
her actual ethnicity proper, is deemed exploitable and inter-
changeable: she merely needs to be indiscriminately “Asian”
in order to fit with what each director presumes women
of the East want and need (typically a “dominant” and
hunky European male). Not only is this fact illustrated
by Lai’s romance with captured and tormented European
Ivan Rassimov in The Man from Deep River, but also by the
original Italian title for the film: Il paese del sesso selvaggio.
The translation reads as “The land of savage sex,” a nod to
previous literary depictions of Thailand and an anticipa-
tion of the country’s representation in Emmanuelle, which
9
See the documentary Me Me Lai Bites Back: Resurrection of the Cannibal Queen on the American Blu-Ray of Eaten Alive! for more details.
Calum Waddell
famously features travelogue-style documentation of
Bangkok’s notorious Soi Cowboy red light district.
The stereotype of Thai ladies as sexy, sinful and sordid
(but never Thai men – in both The Man from Deep River
and Emmanuelle, the male characters are predatory, violent
or a mix of both) has a long legacy, which includes the
British novel A Woman of Bangkok (also known as A Sort
of Beauty, published in 1956). However, it could also be
argued, given the interchangeable nature of “Asianness”
during the 1970s and highlighted by Lai’s ability to be
cast as Chinese, Japanese, Thai, and finally Filipino (in
Last Cannibal World), that the more notorious The World
of Suzie Wong (from author Richard Mason, published in
1957), set in colonial Hong Kong, added to the mystique
of the Far East as a paradise of easily available, impossi-
bly beautiful women for the wealthy European Playboy.
Emmanuelle 2 (Trinacra Films, 1975) swaps Bangkok for
Hong Kong and even introduces to the softcore filone
Indonesian pin-up Laura Gemser, whose beauty would later
catalogue the Black Emanuelle spin-off series (Fig. 6). In
Emmanuelle 2, her Asianness goes unspecified: she just is.
Assuming that it was her Emmanuelle 2 performance that
instigated the Black Emanuelle spin-off filone, it is strange
that her race later becomes African and not Asian. In addi-
tion, Emmanuelle 2 also anticipates the portrayal of Lai’s
“savage” but sexual Filipino in Last Cannibal World by open-
ing with a blonde, blue-eyed Caucasian woman recounting
her rape by four Filipino maids during her stay in Hong
Kong. The story is told to Emmanuelle (Silvia Kristel) as
she sails to the former British colony on the lower deck of
a crowded passenger ship and prompts her arousal. Again,
the message is clear: Asian sexuality (not dissimilar to the
“funky” Jack Johnston-type black presentations of the key
blaxploitation cinema of this era) is “exotic,” “mysterious,”
and even possibly “savage.”
Nevertheless, Lai’s prominent role as the exotic girl-
friend in The Man from Deep River remains trendsetting
because it showcases what cinema had generally avoided:
Oriental beauty as preferable to Western beauty. For as racist
as the exotic girlfriend depiction might be, and Lai’s instant
gooey-eyed subservience to the white actor Ivan Rassimov
is certainly troubling, The Man from Deep River sets up the
MISE- EN - SCÈNE 13
 Orientalism, Star Power and Cinethetic Racism in Seventies Italian Exploitation Cinema

image of an Asian female, and of Thai women, that would
prevail in [s]exploitation films throughout the 1970s. In
1975, for instance, audiences saw Laura Gemser visit the
capital with Emanuelle in Bangkok (Flaminia Produzioni
Cinematografiche, 1976). In addressing The Man from Deep
River as a formative film in its representation of the exotic
girlfriend, whilst being the first to introduce Thailand as
a nation of “savage sex,” it is hopefully now possible to
see how this lesser-known exploitation film and its filone
influenced further examples of Asianness in later seventies
exploitation cinema. Were the film to have been successful
outside of its grindhouse audience, it is not too difficult to
imagine that Lai’s exoticism might have even changed the
direction of Emmanuelle, which is based on the adventures
of Thai author Emmanuelle Arsan. When the film was cast,
however, Dutch model Silvia Kristel filled the role instead
(Fig. 7). This decision, decades later, begs the question of
what is more problematic: Lai’s “exotic” girlfriend role, in
which she “saves” a white European from certain death in
The Man from Deep River and Last Cannibal World – in no
small part due to her sexual availability – or the absence
of an Asian leading lady in a film based on the (possibly
fictional) life of a Thai author.
The Italian cannibal filone and the Black Emmanuelle
film series provide problematic Asian representations, but
seen in the context of the 1970s, these cycles also allowed
two female performers, Lai and Gemser, to reach cult star-
dom and maintain a legitimate presence in the European
cinema of the time and across different demarcations (Fig.
8). Moreover, unlike the male Asian stars that appeared
in, for instance, the spaghetti western cycle, both were
permitted to “sell” their respective films on a rare and
unique presentation of Eastern sexual allure – sold, however
explicitly and even perhaps cynically, as preferable to the
European “norm.” Gemser would go on to gain critical
acclaim for her (clothed) leading role in Love is Forever (Hall
Bartlett Productions, 1982), where she portrays a charac-
ter of Laotian descent, again testifying to the transnational
nature of Asian ethnicity for producers of the time, whilst
Lai would work with Lars Von Trier, headlining his early
classic Element of Crime (Det Danske Filminstitut, 1984).
Whilst both would retire from acting before the end of the
1980s, their status as sex stars of the seventies is certainly
comparable to, for example, Pam Grier in her blaxploitation
films, insofar as shaping a wider dialogue about female race
representation. And even if Grier has been accused, by at
least one scholar, as offering a “pornographic vision of the
black female body through a racist, patriarchal narrative
structure” (Dunn 17), at least one can attest, even if in
agreement of such criticism, that the actress – by way of
her success – created a template for other African-American
performers to build on. Similarly, from the Bangkok-
setting of Emmanuelle to the spin-off Yellow Emmanuelle
and beyond, Lai and Gemser were the original exotic
girlfriends. And whilst their cinematic journey often did
involve clear cinethetic racism by way of assisting white
characters toward personal gain, either survival or spiritual
or sexual satisfaction, they also provided an early insight of
how Asianness could “sell” a film on the world stage. For
this purpose, both deserve to be reassessed as trendsetting
figures in cult cinema – even if their respective and exploit-
ative filones will give scholars of race representations plenty
to denounce. 
The Italian cannibal filone and
the Black Emmanuelle film
series provide problematic Asian
representations but, seen in
the context of the 1970s, these
cycles also allowed two female
performers, Lai and Gemser, to
reach cult stardom and maintain
a legitimate presence in the
European cinema of the time.

14 Vol.05, No.01 | Spring 2020

 Calum Waddell

NOTES
Brottman, Mikita. Offensive Films. Vanderbilt University
Press, 2005.
Dunn, Stephanie. Baad Bitches and Sassy Supermamas: Black
Power Action Films. University of Illinois Press, 2008.
Egan, Kate. Trash or Treasure? Censorship and the Changing
Meanings of Video Nasties. Manchester University
Press, 2007.
Elkins, Caroline. Britain’s Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire
in Kenya. Bodley Head, 2014.
Landis, Bill. Sleazoid Express. Plexus Publishing, 2002.
Me Me Lai Bites Back: Feature Documentary On the Queen
of Cannibal Movies. Eaten Alive! American Blu-ray
edition. High Rising Productions, 2015.
Sims, Yvonne. Women of Blaxploitation: How the Black
Action Film Heroine Changed American Popular
Culture. McFarland Publishing, 2006.

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Dunn, Stephanie. Baad Bitches and Sassy Supermamas: Black
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